The Most Exciting Queers to Follow on Instagram in 2018

By Fran Tirado

January 10, 2018

Expand your horizons beyond brand ambassadors and thirst traps.

Last year, I decided to cleanse my Instagram, looking beyond your usual brand ambassadors and thirst traps in pursuit of the most exciting and interesting queer accounts I could follow. My criteria: 1. They have a considerable body of work, whether they’re a photographer or a go-go dancer. 2. They create content on Instagram that feels unlike any account I’ve ever seen. 3. They feel either "fresh" to the mediascape or relatively undiscovered and ripe for the come-up in 2018.

By those standards, here are some of the most exciting queer people to follow on Instagram this year. I’d love to know your favorites as well — I’m always looking for fresh faces!

His playful the-hell-with-gender flash tattoos are featured all over his Insta, but Mars is also an interdisciplinary artist whose mediums range from portrait photography to performance art (wherein he sticks pins into a voodoo doll of Woody Allen). His tattoos illustrate a wide range of bodies, championing new standards for queer beauty and also grotesqueness e.g. circus performers, bodybuilders, dicks going into meat-grinders, etc.

Chani’s life-altering, ungendered horoscopes for "intersectional mystics" are what put her on the map, but her Instagram has some of the most original and lol-worthy astrology memes you will find, featuring funny animals, iconic women, and anti-Trump propaganda. She is extremely vocal about prioritizing marginalized voices, and she speaks out on Instagram in poignant and original ways.

The handle @cyberbruja does a lot of work, tbh. In addition to posting Instagram-only paper zines wherein you flip through a gallery of their work and illustrations in periodical-form, Cyber Bruja also does de-gendered birth chart readings, “$25 venmo.” Talk about a one-stop shop, eh?

This elegant Chilean is well on her way to being the first openly trans actor to win an Oscar, and you just can’t sleep on that. The way she documents her life on the red carpet feels glamorous and envy-worthy, yet vulnerable and accessible. Any aspiring trans person in Hollywood will love the life she documents, especially in an academy where all the trans roles go to cis people.

Their entire portfolio exclusively documents the lives of queer youth, believing firmly in the future of queerdom according to kids these days. As a nonbinary artist, their work explores tropes in masculinity and femininity, particularly in the boys they date, and their photographs are not only ahead of their time, but deeply moving. Not to mention, a forthcoming project called Junior which will release this year.

She’s an uncontested staple in Brooklyn nightlife, and her Instagram captures every single detail (a side effect of her other professions in graphic design and illustration). Her style of drag is truly unnameable, subverting beauty expectations with artful makeup, entire numbers performed in full-mermaid, and occasionally, goat horns. Her regular appearances on Sasha Velour’s renowned drag cabaret Nightgowns have, in her legacy, traversed drag and ascended into straight-up performance art.

You may know Blair from her viral appearance on the show of the white supremacist goblin king Tucker Carlson, after she came out as a black, queer Muslim in the defense of safe spaces for all those communities. Now Blair’s social media is its own safe space, facilitating everyday activism, creating representations of people of color in her paintings and forthcoming book Modern Herstory, plus her selfies are absolute fire.

Tunde is a Nigerian-American who hails from Flint, Michigan and his music, like the city he comes from, is seen as “political” against its will. Despite that, his Instagram is funny and frank, showcasing his booty-shaking tunes, his many hairstyles, and also his very witch-chic lewks. (He designs his own clothes, people.)

Performance art, poetry, and theater are among many of Travis' practices in addition to being just positively beautiful. Their jaw-dropping fashion sense and radiant makeup should be no distraction to the immense advocacy work they do talking very vulnerably about trans safety, queer family, and bodies, among other things.

Tom has a very elaborate system of Dropbox folders archiving a vast collection of images, periodicals, and clipped footage of pop culture and cultural forms of the queer 21st century. The level of curation he does, somehow, always shows you something you’ve never seen before (“How have I never seen this photo of Cher??”) paired with a simple credit or a longer story about the image if he's feelin' it.

Their catchy EP Amaqhawe takes a raw and minimalist approach to South African house music, but just as important, their personal senses of genderqueer style are. Not. Messing. Around. This duo explores art and identity through song, but also in the spaces they create in Johannesburg, playing a big part in the countercultural queer community there.

You know when you thirst-follow a go go dancer on Instagram, but then you regret it because you’re stuck looking at repetitive and mediocre nightlife content? Forrest is not one of those go go dancers. With a gothic and horror-inspired approach to his looks, his curatorial eye brings the most dark, strange, beautiful, and obscure reference images to his feed and Stories with a humorous twist. (Think renaissance paintings of demons, but rendered as memes.) Plus, he’s a classically trained musician. Can someone please marry him?

Ms. White documents her life and music in a way that is one of the most honest and engaging you’ll find on Instagram. Her longform captions are deeply moving and her short form captions are freaking hilarious. Plus, she has a certified bop called "Fuck Men." Is there really anything else I need to tell you?

“Gender schmender” reads the tagline of Michael’s self-produced publication Pansy — he created his own publishing platform to showcase a range of femininity as seen in men and genderqueer bodies he wasn’t otherwise finding in mainstream publications. The styling, fashion, and softer lens Michael uses to highlight high-femme subjects is gooey, diverse, and delicious.

As a makeup artist alone, Aquaria is worth following. (Google "Aquaria Tiger Lily," then "Aquaria Sophia the Robot.") Her various paint jobs are inspired, unconventional, hyper-detailed, and completely mesmerizing. As a complete package — a visionary look queen and talented performer — she is one of the most original and unexpected drag queens you could follow on Insta. And let’s face it, you follow a lot of drag queens on Insta.

Are you even ready for this fabulousness? Aaron’s sense of self and humorous outlook on life is empowering to say the least as they forage into the modeling world this year despite the industry’s complicated standards for trans and disabled bodies. Get ready for your daily dose of femme pick-me-ups.

Standing gorgeously at the forefront of Brazil’s Black music movement, Liniker is the frontwoman of her band Liniker e os Caramelows. Her music is soulful and her lyricism is heartbreaking. (From Portuguese: “As if war was not enough / To see you everyday, my love.”) Not to mention, her highlighter is always on point.

Focusing on subcultural queer communities and sexual taboos, Benjamin’s work documenting sex workers and the BDSM community is rawly sexual and highly intellectual. Not only do his subjects illustrate big-time diversity, but as a very queer HIV positive artist, his work always educates — whether its about the AIDS crisis or the Folsom Street Fair.

Also known by his charming alter-ego and social handle Putochinomaricón ("whore," "derogatory word for Chinese person," "faggot") Chenta’s electronic seapunk pop as it appears on his Instagram is so dirty, so Internet-y, and so wildly art directed that you cannot help but fall in love with him. His Instagram is deeply political, speaking out on his experiences as a Chinese immigrant living in Madrid, with a futuristic and angsty spin.

Co-founders of your new favorite genderless heels company Syro, Henry and Shaobo are easily two of the strangest and funniest people you could follow in the fashion world. Empowering the femme community with their quirky senses of humor and patriarchy-smashing senses of personal style, I promise you will not regret watching their Instagram stories every night before you go to bed.

You might know Séamus from his viral squiggly drawn illustrative Tumblr jokes about Missy Elliot and Fiona Apple, but his new body of work wields the same laugh-out-loud sense of humor in bigger and more complex ways. On themes of body image, anxiety, politics, and text-based work (“Violent men who memorize Judith Butler quotes are still violent men.”) the art he posts on his Instagram will be the most #relatablecontent you’ll find by way of fine art.

You might recognize Cute Brute from the queer-as-hell Instagram stickers that invaded your IG feed this Pride season, but their body of work is so worth your follow, I cannot even begin to tell you. Their butt-centric art is sublime, hilarious, strangely sexy, and very “How did they think of that???” Plus they are literally just so, so cute.

Last year, Adam was the Instagay you just could not avoid on your queer feed if you tried, and for good reason. Though very green in the activism world, Adam has blown through social media walls with a mission to #MakeActivismCoolAgain, rallying huge circulations for each demonstration he hosts with his organization Voices4 and converting young people to activism with flying colors — all through Instagram.

More than just a pretty face, this year, after emerging as every queer’s favorite person on the runway at fashion week, Torraine gave a show at the New York darling’s Public Hotel for an intimate evening performing her music. This up-and-coming multihyphenate has a particular brand of fierce that is worth subscribing to.

From designing sportswear, shooting films, and art directing fashion editorials, Shukri (aka Wifirider) is giving a big middle finger to Palestinian stereotypes and politics in ways that are controversial while still funny and strange. The subversive cyberpunk has launched a fashion line that challenges the status quo of his country while donating proceeds to Syrian and Palestinian refugee camps.

One the best things to happen in 2017 was this Instagram account, a personal project by a married couple that archives their personal collection of 80,000 images documenting queer history (and they’ve got a book out this year!). Most posts come with immense reading material regarding the, era, photographer, subject, or moment in time, telling these stories in a way that fights erasure with immense responsibility and care.

Fran Tirado is a writer, editor, and community-maker for all things queer. He is the co-host of the Food 4 Thot podcast, the Executive Editor of Hello Mr., and co-founder of Communion, a queer artist collective.